The court declined to give these rulings, but instructed the jury that the plaintiff’s failure to register would not of itself bar his right to recover, since the law does not provide that one who fails to register his automobile cannot make use of it upon the highway. “The failure of the plaintiff to register his automobile cannot be held to tend to prove contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff, unless you find that such conduct was illegal, and that it directly contributed to the accident upon which this case is founded; that is, unless you find it to have been the cause, or one of the causes, of this accident; and no such claim, that is, that this did directly contribute to the accident, is made in this case as I understand the contention of counsel.”
The statute relative to automobiles then in force (Public Acts of 1907, chap. 221, pp. 821 to 828), provides, in § 2, for the registering of automobiles and the placing of numbers on machines so registered. The penalty to any person having failed to register or display his number was not more than $100, or imprisonment not more than thirty days, or both.
The plaintiff was violating the statute relating to the registration of automobiles, but that fact does not relieve the defendant. This statute imposed an obligation upon the plaintiff to register his automobile, and for its violation prescribed a penalty. The statute goes no further, and it cannot be held that the right to maintain an action for damages resulting from the omission of the defendant to perform a public duty is taken away because the person injured was at the time his injuries were sustained disobeying a statute law which in no way contributed to the accident. A traveller with an unregistered and unnumbered automobile is not made a trespasser upon the street, neither does it necessarily follow that the property which he owns is outside of legal protection when injured by the unlawful acts of another. “There is some real and more apparent conflict of opinion in the many cases treating of the relation between an illegal act and a coincident injury. In doing an unlawful act a person does not necessarily put himself outside the protection of the law. He is not barred of redress for an injury suffered by himself, nor liable for an injury suffered by another, merely because he is a lawbreaker. In actions to recover for injuries not intentionally inflicted but resulting from a breach of duty which another owed to the party injured—commonly classed as actions for negligence—the fact that the plaintiff or defendant at the time of the injury was a lawbreaker may possibly be relevant as an incidental circumstance, but is otherwise immaterial unless the act of violating the law is in itself a breach of duty to the party injured in respect to the injury suffered.” Monroe v. Hartford Street Ry. Co., 76 Conn. 201, 206, 56 Atl. 498.
The registration of the plaintiff’s machine was of no consequence to the defendant. His failure to register and display his number in no way contributed to cause the injury. The accident would have happened if the law in this respect had been fully observed. The plaintiff’s unlawful act was not the act of using the street, but in making a lawful use of it without having his automobile registered and marked as required by law. The statute contains no prohibition against using an unlicensed and unnumbered automobile upon the highways and streets of the State.
The defendant placed much reliance upon the authority of Dudley v. Northampton Street Ry. Co., 202 Mass. 443, 446, 89 N. E. 25. In that case the Supreme Court of Massachusetts was called upon to construe the effect of a statute which provided that no automobile should be operated upon any public highway unless it was registered, &c. Dudley, the plaintiff in that action, was a resident of Connecticut. He had fully complied with the laws of Connecticut, and had a right to operate his machine on the highways of Massachusetts for a period not exceeding fifteen days. After being in Massachusetts more than fifteen days, Dudley’s automobile collided with the defendant’s trolley-car. The Massachusetts court held that Dudley was a trespasser against the rights of all persons lawfully controlling or using the public highways of Massachusetts.
The difference between the Dudley case and the one now under consideration is that in Massachusetts there was a statutory prohibition against using upon the highways of that State an automobile unregistered and unmarked. As already stated, no such provisions appeared in the Connecticut statutes which were in force when the plaintiff’s automobile was injured.
There is no error.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.[[250]]